The 13 Good Things About ‘Destiny 2: The Edge Of Fate’

I have made no secret about the fact that on the whole, I do not especially like the latest Destiny 2 expansion, The Edge of Fate, nor the general direction the game is now moving in. Me complaining about Destiny is not a new phenomenon, but as a break from that, I will list some things I do like about The Edge of Fate and these changes, as those do in fact exist. So, let’s begin.

The New Nine Story – I wasn’t sure about this at first, but after The Edge of Fate I’ve come to believe that it was actually a pretty good call to focus on The Nine as the next major antagonists of the new era. They’ve been a fixture in the game for a decade, but always behind the scenes and after all this time, we barely know anything about them. Now we will, and what we’ve learned so far has been very interesting.

Lodi – New character Lodi, a special agent pulled through time and thrown onto Kepler, is one of the best-written, well-voiced characters I’ve seen in this game in ages. Possibly ever, somehow. He’s likable, funny and authentic. A great addition to the cast.

Target Farming – The featured gear of The Portal allows you to target farm a specific slot in a much easier way than we’ve seen previously, plus bonus drops are a way to get even more rolls by bouncing around between activities.

Mid-Mission Drops – Lord, I do not know how long I’ve been saying this, but loot that drops during a mission should not be random, crappy world loot, it should be loot you’d get from that activity as bonus drops. Finally, finally they’ve done it with The Portal. Thank you.

Solo Ops – The content of this playlist may need work, but the existence of something that you can hop into as a solo player, scale up the difficulty as much as you want and earn guaranteed power upgrades is welcome, and we’ve never really had anything like this before. (Why you’re getting power upgrades and how that system feels is another matter).

Set Bonuses – This is a cool addition to armor that I’ve been hoping to see for some time. There’s a lot of potential here, as these are already far more useful than origin traits on weapons. We can already see with the raid set just how build-boosting these can be, and there are only going to be more possibilities from here.

The Earned Bushido Set – The samurai armor is one of the coolest free armor sets you can earn in Destiny in a very long time. A must-earn just for the transmog possibilities alone.

The Existence Of The Tier System – Let me be clear here, I like the concept of a Tier system for loot, 1-5 roads for weapons and armor that have meaningful upgrades in time. The execution of this right now is what needs work with getting higher Tiers being utterly exhausting and no way to upgrade between tiers. But fundamentally I do think a Tier system with some modifications is a good move.

The Portal Landing Page – You know, I don’t hate it. Again, the concept of The Portal taking over the game is one thing, but I do think the very clear landing page for the Ops playlists and Kepler is streamlined in a way that the old Destination map was not with its endless flashing icons and spread-out mission buttons. The Portal very much lacks personality, but it does come off as more coherent, even to a veteran player like me.

Daily/Weekly Auto-Quests – These have proven to be a solid source of XP, and while confusing, the ability to grab guaranteed, decent (for now) loot from Zavala every week feels like a good addition. But they didn’t need to delete Pathfinder for this.

New Weapons – Some of these are really good! The rocket pulse is the highlight (I still don’t have one, grrr), but I’ve enjoyed a number of the new weapons across the different avenues to get them.

The Raid – No, I haven’t played the raid yet. Yes, I can probably still classify it as good given community sentiment now that we’re behind all the Contest Mode drama. Supposedly it may be one of the game’s best.

Foundry Boost – We logged in this week for a surprise boot of SUROS weapons, giving them 25% more damage across The Portal and getting us out of the New Gear-demanded system temporarily to use some old favorites for big boosts. These boosts becoming a regular thing will be fun.

I’m forgetting some, and the larger structural problems with the game are in fact awful now, but smaller things? They got a lot right.

Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, Bluesky and Instagram.

Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy